Political Entanglements: Practicing, Designing and Implementing Critical Trans Politics Through Social Scientific Research

Conversations of queer methodologies have led to innovative interrogations and explorations of what social scientific research can look like with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit and additional (LGBTQ2+) communities. Queer methodologies interrogate the ways in which identities become (re)constituted amongst researchers and participants, and in the process problematize subject positions and forms of power as they manifest throughout the research process. Yet few discussions have emerged around extending queer methodologies to research with trans communities and the ways in which trans researchers’ experiences, subjectivities and politics inform trans-related research. This chapter explores what it means to centralize critical trans politics in social scientific research and the political entanglements that emerge when this political imperative – one that recognizes intersectionality, social and state violence against trans people, and the complex mechanisms of transphobia in everyday lives – comes in contact with cis-centered bureaucracies of the research process.